Recap from part 1 and 2

Episteme is the highest and best type of G knowledge we can have of effects or derivative
objects caused by something else
We have episteme once we demonstrate the effects
Demonstrations is not necessarily how we come to know the knowledge
But only can you call it episteme when you can demonstrate it
Demonstration is deduction from principles (fundamentals)
How do we get to G knowledge of principles (nous)?
We reach this from a certain input knowledge- perception
Question: John Lewis said this morning that nous is all around us like an ether- like air
John Lewis was referring to The Cloud
Nous can mean your intelligence or understanding
There is a wide tradition in Greek thought to use this in other ways- sort of cosmic
Aristotle thinks of his god as nous but thats not what were getting into here
So how do we get from perception to principle?
Induction
This is a term that Aristotle throws around but when he speaks technically about achieving
nous this is not the term he uses
Two questions from part 2:
1 How can episteme be universal knowledge when reality is made of particulars
His answer was that episteme is a power to know things but when you know in full actuality
what youre knowing is a particular
2 How can nous of the principles come about from less high grade, less intense, forms of
knowledge like perception
Last lecture was about the various states involved on the way from perception to nous
This lecture is about the process we need to go through (methodological advice) to reach
principles
Aristotle discusses the methods for thinking in the Organon (focus of this lecture) and later in the
corpus when investigating animals and other facts, he will pause and make recommendations about
what to do.
In The Topics, Aristotle discusses dialectics
Dialectic just means conversation or conversationsal. Its talking something through
Describes what Socrates would do when he chatted with younger people
Just a conversational method
Plato and others came to take it as a method of philosophy
Mostly entails exposing contradictions
Working through your views, checking for and resolving contradictions
In The Academy (Platos school) it took on the form of an exercise
There would be a bout of dialectic. One person would be the answerer.
Ex: Would start with a question: are all painful things bad? The answerer would answer
and then have to defend himself against other questions as a kind of sport
The Topics, in part, is a manual for how to play this game.
Aristotle defines dialectics as the ability to answer and ask questions without being
caught in a contradiction/being about to catch others in contradictions
A dialectical argument is an argument from endoxa
A premise is endoxan when it is a reputable opinion
An opinion that has some currency
Dialectics is useful for
Practice of thought
In learning how to convince others in every day situations
Useful in connection with the principles of the sciences
If youre able to argue on either side of the question, it will help you determine
what the principles are.
Some people take Aristotles entire method in philosophy to be dialectic
Salmieri disagrees with this interpretation
The Topics also talks about types of propositions
Some propositions tell you accidental characteristics- just a fact
Ex: You have blonde hair
Some propositions tell you not just one fact but a distinguishing characteristic
Ex: men can laugh.
Because only men can laugh- a distinguishing characteristic
Some propositions purport to tell you the genus
Ex: Man is an animal
Some propositions give you the definition
Man is the rational animal
Topics then gives you tactics for arguing for and against each of the four types of propositions
In book 2 of the posterior analytics, Aristotle talks about investigation- how you look into things
Distinguishes different kinds of things we seek:
1: The that and the why
Ex: whether the sun is eclipsed or not, ex: does the earth move
Ex: Why does the sun eclipse, ex: why does the earth move
Aristotle believes that these questions go in an order. You cant look at why something is the
case until you know that it is the case.
You couldnt ask why there is global warming without first establishing that global
warming is real
You could come to know the that and the why at the same time but you could not go
looking for a why without knowing the that
2: If it is and what it is
Ex: Whether there are centaurs or not is an if it is question
Ex: There are centaurs, so what are they? is a what it is question
Looking for the that and looking for the if it is amount to the same thing in Aristotles view.
Looking for the that is looking for whether a subject has a certain predicate
Ex: is the sun eclipsed, ex: does the earth move
Can be reconfigured into a that
Ex: Is there a lunar eclipse is the same as asking Is the moon eclipsed
Ex: Are there unicorns is the same as do some horses have horns
Ex: Are there gods is the same as are any animals immortal
There are certain if it is that cant be changed into a that it is
Ex: there are entities
What subject predicate combo do you use for that? There isnt one.
Ex: there are quantities
These sorts of things cant be reformulated. But in these cases you cant even ask these
questions. If you asked are there quantities you already know that there are otherwise you
wouldnt ask.
There is no complexity to the concept such that the question does not even arise
These cant be broken down into genus-differentia
But for most things this isnt a problem
Aristotle also believes that the what it is and the why it is are the same thing too [Reminds me of
Rands interpretation of the law of causality as being a derivative of the law of identity- what it is
determines why is it]
Ex: Is there any thunder. Or is there a noise in the clouds. One way or another we establish
that there is. Now we ask why is there a noise in the cloud?
Asking the why amounts to asking for the middle term between noise and clouds
Something that is prior by nature- something that belongs to clouds in a more
fundamental nature that makes noise belong to clouds too
The middle term, in Aristotles example, is the extinguishing of fire. There is an
extinguishment of fire in the clouds and that is why theyre noisy
Note: Aristotle does not think this is the correct explanation
In his logical works he does not care to give the correct explanations of things but he
is merely outlining the proper method to use and this is a plausible enough
explanation- philosophers call it a toy example
Therefore, the what it is question is the same as the why it is question
Q: what is thunder, A: its the extinguishing of fire in the clouds- the why
The why it is and the what it is are both giving you the middle term
They are both establishing the connection between two terms (the middle term)
Now, what about the question of what connects the extinguishing of fire and the noise
Is there something between the noise and the extinguishing of fire?
There may be more middle terms to fill in
Say there is a middle term, the extinguishing of fire is the disruption of air, for example
Is there something between the clouds and the extinguishing of fire
For example maybe because the clouds are moist
Therefore, to be a demonstration we need to fill in all of these middle terms
Aristotle calls it, thickening
Eventually all of the connections are indivisible
By doing this, well have defined all the terms and grasped the causes
Ex: That certain noise is an exhalation of air. Clouds extinguish fire because theyre moist. What
the extinguishing of fire is, is moistness overcoming heat
At some point our example breaks down because its not true but this is the proper method
Therefore, once youve got your thats you try to fill in your middle terms by thickening
Once youve thickened all the way you have your demonstration
Question: At what point are you done thickening?
You stop when you reach the fundamentals.
We could ask two questions
What makes it the case that there is no thickening left to do
Youve gotten down to the fundamental causes
You have all the right definition of all terms
Ex: Exhalations of air just are noisy because what noise is is an exhalation of air
How do you know when theres no thickening left to do
Will say more about this later
Aristotle thinks were often wrong about whether weve done it- its hard to know
He never fully spells it out but gives lots of examples of when people had thought they
got to the bottom of something and they hadnt
Notice that to go from an if it is to a that it is requires the use of a definition
Ex: Is there thunder in the clouds, converts to, are the clouds noisy
Noise in the clouds is the definition of thunder
Aristotle distinguishes several types of definition
An account of what a name signifies (this type differs from the subsequent types)
Ex: what does triangle mean: a three sided figure
An answer to the question, what does this word mean
So by this view, things that dont exist can have definitions.
You can give an answer to what does the word Angel means
Normally you do not have words and then have to come up with what they mean-
rather you form words after something in reality gives rise to it.
A sort of demonstration of what something is but differently arranged
Ex: Thunder is noise in the clouds due to the extinguishing of fire
A demonstration would be: anything that extinguishes fire is noisy, the clouds
extinguish fire, therefore the clouds are noisy.
The definition is just a rearrangement of this chain of assertions
A statement that corresponds to the conclusion of the demonstrations
Ex: a noise in the clouds
This is a more superficial definition
An indemonstrable positing of what something is
Most basic type of definition that just give you the middle term
Ex: thunder is the extinguishing of fire
Aristotle is interested in whether you can prove that something is a definition
In order to even inquire about the definition you must know that the thing exists
Once you know that it exists, you can start looking for the fundamental to define it.
To know that it exists you have to have some sort of grasp of the phenomenon
You cannot demonstrate a definition because a definition is the very fundamental of the
demonstrations
What you can do is demonstrate the more superficial definition
Ex: the clouds are noisy is the superficial definition
But if you demonstrate the connection between noise and clouds, that is, the
middle term- the extinguishing of fire, you show that the middle term is the thing
that defines the thing you grasped more superficially
What you demonstrate is that the clouds get noisy, but by using the extinguishing of fire to
prove this, you prove that the extinguishing of fire is the correct definition
Therefore, you show that something is the right definition of something by showing that the
characteristic by which youre defining it is fundamental to the other characteristics that
distinguish it from other things
Ex: You show that the fire extinguishing is the fundamental cause for thunder and therefore
the right definition
How do we find our middle terms? How do we go from seeing that the clouds are noisy to
understanding what causes the noise?
Ex: How would someone come to see fire as the cause of thunder?
They would see a booming noise that goes along with fire extinguishing when they put out
the campfire, and the lightening in the sky as fire, and that the clouds are wet (theres fog
and they rain)
So you see the connection
By knowing more things about your major and minor terms, you know a lot about clouds and
booming noises, you start looking among the things you know about the terms until you find
something that connects them up
This is leading to false conclusions but the method is sound (you can challenge these
premises by keeping the broad methodology- ie, noting that lightening is not really fire etc)
The main thing you need to do is to start identifying things at the right level of generality
the primitive universal
Having done this, you will have both the thats that you need to find the whys for and also
the premises that will supply you with the middle terms
Ex: you notice that all olive vines shed their leaves- so leaf shedding belongs universally to
all olive vines. However, you notice that there are other plants that shed their leaves.
Therefore this is not the highest universal of leaf shedding.
What kinds of plants at the most universal shed their leaves?
All broad leaf plants shed their leaves- and only broad leaf plants do
The thing of which shedding is a distinguishing characteristic is broad leaf trees.
But shedding is an even more general phenomenon
So what is it about broad leaf plants that gives rise to the shedding?
The cause is the brittleness that occurs when the leaves dry out
Now reconsider the example of the even numbers from lecture 1
One might notice that anything multiplied by 2 yields something even, and anything multiplied
by 4 results in something even, and something multiplied by 6 yields something even, etc
To try and explain any one of those characteristics without stepping back and taking a
universal view is going to be impossible
You have to step back and take a wider view to see that its any even number youre
multiplying by
Ex: Some issues with Objectivism that people often bring up:
Why are there so many gay people associated with Objectivism?
Go to the higher universal- there are many gay communists, etc
All of these are counter cultural movements
Gay people generally are put down our outcast leading them to search for such
movements
Why are there so many schisms in Objectivism?
Go higher- there are schisms in the abolitionist movement, the founding fathers,
environmentalists, communists, etc
Its true of every intellectual movement that is significantly different and wants to put
its ideas into practice- Ideological movements are prone to acrimonious splits.
Once you form the observation at this wider level the reasons begin to become clear
These movements are based upon certain moral considerations
Moral disagreements are particularly vehement disagreement
Trying to apply an abstract principle to daily life is difficult and can easily result
in different opinions
What we need to do when looking for the broadest level is be aware that we might not have a name
for the predicate or subject involved
This often causes us to think that weve reached the most primitive level even though we
havent
Ex: imagine a discussion where you ask, are communists prone to schisms, yes. Are
environmentalists, yes. Are objectivists, yes. So are all of these people?
Depends on what you mean by all these people
There might not be a concept yet for all these people
All of these have something in common (that theyre ideological movements)
You need to isolate what it is that youre making a universal of
Must come up with a word or phrase to denote the universal: ideological
movements
What justifies us making a new concept, like ideological movements?
1 There is some kind of likeness or similarity
2 Something follows or co-occurs with this likeness and similarity such that we have something
to say about all of these units.
You should give a name for a kind when the units differ in the more or the less (quantitatively)
You want to formulate the data in your field not as, all bulls have this trait but all and only bulls
have this trait
When you do this you might find that you dont have a word for the widest kind that is relevant
If you look at Aristotles history of Animals, what you find him doing is trying to find these widest
correlations- called widest class generalizations
This is how you form a concept when you have all sorts of other concepts already in place
How do you go about forming concepts where you dont have other concepts yet?
You need to grasp that things are similar in such a way that there are some things that
follow that are true of all of these things
This is what you can do if you have emperia
You name this similarity, ex: man
What youre doing when you form a concept is grasping that things are alike
And that there are certain causal connections that follow from the similarity
When we do this, we start by doing it in a very coarse way (as opposed to fine)
Only later do we start refining our terms to group things in more narrow ways
Ex: Children start by calling all men father and all women mom
Its not that theyre confusing the people, but rather that they confuse being a
mother with being a woman. They havent differentiated these concepts
As they get more sophisticated they notice that some things dont hold of all
men but hold of their father.
Theyre not only grouping things together (as the phalanx) but theyre also
subdividing each individual to isolate the different aspects of that individual
that are made salient when he is grouped with other men.